On 3/31/20, Ingo Schwarze <schwa...@usta.de> wrote: > There is value in compatibility with historical documents, in > particular where the consequences of changing behaviour would be > as ugly as for historical code similar to "\s99 nroff\s0". > Then again, there is also value in avoiding surprising parser > rules, in particular for something as surprising as what \s99 does. > > Strong arguments both ways...
Very well put. Where is the balance between total adherence to historical functionality that itself was rooted in a particular piece of 1970s hardware, and usefulness to document creators in 2020, 2030, and beyond? My fear is that if groff chooses to studiously avoid even the most minor inconvenience to people typesetting 40-year-old documents that use dubious syntax, at the expense of obvious clarity to anyone writing content today, it will fail to attract and retain the user base it needs to remain healthy into the future. (Admittedly, in the realm of *roff gotchas, this is not one of the larger ones. But the expense of changing it is perhaps equally minor.)
